Since its all-too-brief London run, Alan Bennett's play about eight bright Sheffield schoolboys being groomed for Oxbridge by their ambitious headmaster has dazzled Broadway and won just about every award going. Transferring stage performances direct to audio doesn't always work, as fascinating but fuzzy recordings of vintage RSC classics by the British Library have shown. Happily for audio listeners, this skilfully adapted Radio 3 version of Nicholas Hytner's original National Theatre production preserves every syllable of Bennett's wit, losing only the video sequences, which I didn't think particularly relevant anyway. It's Bennett's words you want. The Lady in the Van, Maggie Smith notwithstanding, was an infinitely better short story than a play. So anyway, the headmaster wants his history boys to go to Oxbridge and hires a supply teacher to give them that extra polish. Hector, the unorthodox (to put it mildly) English teacher, a Sheffield University graduate who is given to fiddling, albeit playfully, with the boys who ride pillion on his scooter, isn't impressed by the idea and quotes AE Housman to back him up. "Housman, wasn't he a nancy sir?" "Foul, festering, grubby-minded little trollop, do not use that word." "But you use it sir." "I do sir, I know, but I'm far gone in age and decrepitude," replies Hector, lashing out with a folded paper. "You're not supposed to hit us sir, we could report you." "Child, I am your teacher. Whatever I do in this room is a token of my trust." Extramural activities apart, no one would dispute Hector's educational integrity - which cannot be said for the new teacher, Irwin, who favours histrionics over history. If you want to learn about Stalin, study Henry VIII, if you want to learn about Mrs Thatcher, study Henry VIII, if you want to know about Hollywood, study Henry VIII is his theory. As always with Bennett, the laughs are interspersed with moments in which boys and masters reveal their true, painfully touching feelings. This is Bennett at his wittiest and grittiest.

The Vagina Monologues, written and read by Eve Ensler (2hrs unabridged, Time Warner, £14.99)

To start with, admits Ensler in her introduction, when she performed her sell-out one-woman show she used to wear stockings and heavy boys' shoes. Now she does it barefoot. Many women, I suspect, will experience the same psychological transition listening to this frank, funny, outrageous exposé (if that's the right word) celebrating feminine sexuality and condemning its violation. The monologues are based on interviews with girls, grannies, sex workers, lesbians and victims of Bosnian rape camps. Now Ensler is deluged with letters from women worldwide, thanking her for freeing up their memories of pain, fears and fantasy. She also gets sent products such as vulva lamps and clit lollipops. Vaginas, says Ensler, are surrounded by darkness and secrecy. Like the Bermuda triangle, no one ever reports back. Until now. Everything, possibly rather more than everything, you ever wanted to know about the subject - including where the world's vagina-friendly zones are: Oklahoma and San Francisco, for the record - it's here. Part poetry, part polemic, always entertaining, you will love it or hate it, but you will never forget it.